2022.06.04 - 06.25

Tomoyo Ihaya

PATHS

Inspired by people whom she met in the past 17 years of her journeys, Paths is the new project by Vancouver-based artist Tomoyo Ihaya. In numerous communities she visited and got to know personally, Ihaya came across individuals with spirit of compassion and altruism for the world’s peace and everyone’s well being. Hence she set out to create a series of zines that merges different stories and experiences. With contributions by writers, journalists and activists on themes including meanings of life, freedom and humanity, the result is a compelling work that extends across cultures and borders.

According to the artist: "Even if we, living in separate communities and speak different languages, haven't met one another in person, we may be able to connect one another by reading writings and poems in each language . . . Many lives have been sacrificed, human rights persecutions have increased in multiple pieces of lands, and there are many more people struggling to survive. I can only hope and pray for the sufferings to end. On the other hand, I feel that this adversity is an opportunity to rethink the direction how we can live as a part in an interconnected world. This humble project can be a small contribution for that."

Tomoyo Ihaya was born in Tsu-City, Mie, Japan and is based in Vancouver, Canada. Her works have been featured in solo and two-person shows in South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Japan, Mexico, India, Canada, and the United States. She has  participated in many artists’ residencies in Asia and has been awarded numerous grants from the Canada Council and the British Columbia Arts Council. Her work is held in public and private collections nationally and internationally. Ihaya holds a BA (German Literature) from Rikkyo University, Tokyo, and an MFA from the University of Alberta, Edmonton.

2022.04.23 - 05.28

Lynda Gammon

Passing Comments

A Selected Exhibition of

Capture Photography Festival

Passing Comments, a wall collage of over 700 photographs, is a personal and poetic mediation on a particular feminist history by Lynda Gammon. Arriving to teach in a visual arts department in the mid-1980s, this work documents Gammon’s everyday life at work. Over the course of a decade, comments made became embedded in her mind. As years went on, the artist began creating small figures using chopsticks, Styrofoam balls, and pipe cleaners and photographed these figures in various relationships to each other. She then also pasted the comments she remembered onto the photographs to recreate the poignant, absurd, and at times intense scenarios. Gammon titled the work Passing Comments as a reflection of her experience in the academic institution, and an ironic look on the seemingly incidental nature of the remarks.

Lynda Gammon holds a BFA from Simon Fraser University (1978) and an MFA from York University (1983). Her work has been exhibited in venues across Canada and beyond. Gammon lives and works in Victoria BC and is currently Associate Professor Emerita in the Visual Arts Department at the University of Victoria. In 2004 Gammon established flask which is dedicated to the production and publication of books by artists and writers. She is currently a Board member of the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria and the Victoria Art Council.

2022.04.08   6:30 PM

Revolution of Our Times

An Off-site Film Screening

Revolution of Our Times (Chinese: 時代革命) is a 2021 Hong Kong documentary directed by Kiwi Chow. With interviews and footage of the frontline protest scenes, the film covers the stories of the 2019–2020 Hong Kong protests. The documentary takes its name from a locally well-known political slogan "liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times" which has been ruled as illegal by the Hong Kong High Court.

The screening took place at BC Artscape Sun Wah.

2021.05.08 - 05.31

New & Noteworthy

New Artist's Books and Zines

New & Noteworthy is a book exhibition that brings together exciting new work by various artists including Genevieve Hergott, Gary Kachadourian, David Khang, Jeff Kulak, Chaochi Lau, Forrest Lau, Tom de Pekin and publications by Solo Ma Non Troppo (Paris), Little Mountain Press (Shenzhen/New York) and Artspeak Gallery (Vancouver).

The exhibition also features some photobooks and zines newly created by Emily Carr University graduates/students, including Sophia Boutsakis, Pacale Jean and Amber Ross.

2021.03.20 - 05.01

Guesthood and Alienhood

Sun Yung Shin, Jinny Yu, Republic of the Other

curated by Godfre Leung

Guesthood and Alienhood is a group exhibition of bookwork by Sun Yung Shin (Minneapolis), Jinny Yu (Seoul/Ottawa), and Republic of the Other. It engages the circulating apparatus of the book as a medium for creating bonds, and through these bonds pursues identity forms beyond guest and alien.

At the centre of the exhibition is Baridegi: A Hole is Born, a new collaboration between Shin and Yu that retells the Korean folktale of Baridegi through a generative process of passing poems and drawings passed back and forth via email and a Drive folder.

Other works include HÔTE (guest/host), a new artist's book that Yu made during quarantine; a selection of redacted documents from granted to a foreign citizen, a book of poetry by Shin made from keepsakes from her naturalization as an American citizen as a young Korean adoptee; and Little Gray Book, Republic of the Other’s artists’ book manifesto. Together, these bookworks initiate a conversation addressing the politics of asylum, borders, family separation, and settler colonialism.

2020.11.21 - 2021.02.13

Cover Me

LPs,Cassettes & Artists

2020.09.12 - 10.31

Jenny Lin

Pandemic Drawings

"This exhibition is an ongoing series of drawings and text that documents my experience and observations during the current coronavirus pandemic. I began the series as a way to record some of the strangeness of the circumstances, and as a way to create some structure to my day, something that I could share with friends online. I would make a drawing or series of drawings based on something I had seen, read or heard about, and post it on Instagram with a text description. In the series, mostly I focus on my own perspective and happenings at the local level, here in Tiohtià:ke / Montreal.  It’s not meant to be a comprehensive coverage of all aspects of the pandemic.

"At some point, my own daily waking life started to feel so banal and tiny, as I am (fortunate enough to be) one of the people who can mostly stay at home. My outings are limited to whatever is within walking distance. At the same time, I had been having intense pandemic-related dreams, so I started to document those as short comics, noting that my waking preoccupations were playing out in my dream space.

"Then, on May 25, 2020, George Floyd was murdered by police in Minneapolis, and the video leading up to his death was circulated widely. The world reacted with outrage, sparking a renewed yet unprecedented momentum in the movement for racial equity and justice, including calls for police reform or abolishment and a demand for a long-overdue examination and overhaul of structures that enable and perpetuate systemic inequity and abuse of power.

The pandemic has exposed so many inequities but also has created a different sort of space, time and energy with which we can try to restructure our world. I hope that it will really happen, and that the demand and desire continues to drive us even after we all 'return to normal', whenever and whatever that will be."

~ Jenny Lin, 2020

Jenny Lin is a visual artist based in Tiohtiá:ke / Montréal who works with experimental narrative, fictional and autobiographical content, mostly in the form of print-based installations, artists’ books and zines. She is drawn to the socio-political, accessible and community-based aspects of print and zine-making, self-publishing and distribution, and uses drawing and text as a way to process life experiences and connect with the world around her.

2020.01.25 - 03.28

Lise Melhorn-Boe

Sewing Poems

Lise Melhorn-Boe (Kingston ON) has been making artist’s books for 40 years. Her early work explored issues of gender. Later, she began examining the roles of mother and wife, the socialization of children and how fairy tales reflect our attitudes. Breast cancer brought her attention to how our environment affects our collective health, which led to books made of recycled materials.

In this mini-retrospective to celebrate her 40th Anniversary in art making, Melhorn-Boe is exhibiting selected work from her vast oeuvre of artist’s books throughout her long career. Along side with the archival materials, the artist also debut her current ongoing project, Sewing Poems – a body of work using fabric and various sewing techniques to explore poems about sewing.

Lise Melhorn-Boe was born in Noranda, Quebec. She studied at the University of Guelph (B.A.) and received her M.A. and M.F.A. degrees from Wayne State University in Detroit. She has exhibited widely across Canada and the United States, as well as in Europe and South America.

2019.07.04 - 07.20

Freedom-Hi!

Zines from Hong Kong's Civil Movements

Because of the political crisis in Hong Kong since June 2019, Hotam Press Gallery initiated ZINE COOP to exhibit a collection of related artist's zines, booklets and posters about the democratic movement. It was the first-ever FREEDOM HI exhibition and has since traveled internationally.

In May/June 2019, the world witnessed millions of its citizens taken to the streets to peacefully protest a controversial extradition bill that could send the residents to Mainland China to be tried in court. The protests, in turn, questioned the human rights and freedom issues under the dictatorship of the Communist Party. The situation continued to escalate and create unrests within Hong Kong as well as China’s relationship with the world.

The Exhibition highlights and investigates the current social and political condition of Hong Kong.

Like in other parts of the world, the new generations in Hong Kong has taken up zine making and other DIY tactics as common practice and outlet in the expressing of ideas, spreading of messages and voicing their concerns. Playful, creative and often humorous, these activist zines bring us closer to the milieu and the fundamental concerns of the makers.